The post-pandemic era has seen a significant change in workplace culture. Employees are now prioritizing their well-being over anything else. And organizations are redefining their workplaces and choosing to be people-first.
But, how are both parties able to understand each other needs and wants? This is where continuous feedback comes into the picture. It is a vital tool that is bridging the gap between employees and managers. Hence, leading to the building of happier and stronger teams.
But creating a continuous feedback culture is not easy as it seems. It requires time, effort, and a lot of mistakes. Hence, we bring you 7 simple ways to implement which can help you minimize mistakes and efforts and save time.
Ways to implement continuous feedback culture
- Create a feedback-safe culture: Feedback is still not prevalent as employees hesitate to give their honest opinions. They feel that they might lose their job or face repercussions at the workplace.
- Before implementing continuous feedback culture, ensure that employees feel safe to give candid feedback.
- Ensure that you encourage the feedback-driven culture from Day 1, even for new hires as well.
- Let employees know how their feedback will be acted upon and implemented.
- Build trustworthy and meaningful relationships with employees and managers.
- Make sure that everyone is well aware of the company’s objectives, mission, and culture.
- Start with one department first: Start with one department before implementing it in the whole organization. This will save you time and resources and will let you know what works best and what does not.
- The soft launching in one department will help in testing out different ways of implementing it.
- Through this, you can check what tools and techniques are right for your workplace.
- You can do this for around 2 months and get a detailed analysis from the insights. How this culture is impacting the department environment and what more can be done?
- And then after detailed analysis, you can have it in the whole organization.
- This soft launch will help in understanding how employees want to exchange feedback.
- Have 1-on-1 meetings with your team: 1-on-1 meetings are an important part of a continuous feedback culture. It lets you know your employees personally. And have detailed conversations about their goals and growth.
- 1-on-1 meetings give you clarity about your employees’ personal and professional growth.
- It lets you ask them open-ended questions and resolve issues and conflicts if there are any.
- 1-on-1 meetings that are conducted timely help in providing directions to the employees.
- But before implementing it, ensure that you have the right mindset to conduct it.
- These meetings will increase the productivity and performance of the employees.
- Set goals and track progress: While implementing continuous feedback culture, set S.M.A.R.T. goals for employees. And also find ways to track their progress. It let your employees keep a check on their growth and the organization is assisting them.
- Many ways can assist you in tracking progress. A few of them include:
- OKR
- Smart goals
- 30-60-90 days plan
- These replace yearly goals that are mostly rigid and unrealistic.
- You can break down the larger goals and can set them into smaller and manageable goals.
- It generates better results and helps in understanding strengths and weaknesses.
- Hence, it improves performance that further leading to better performing work culture.
- Many ways can assist you in tracking progress. A few of them include:
- Measure and reward employees: A feedback culture is not only about giving and receiving feedback and acting on it. It includes tracking employees’ performance in check and rewarding them for their efforts.
- Employee recognition improves engagement as well as relationships between colleagues and managers.
- Rewarding employees doesn’t always mean giving gifts or taking them out. Rather saying Thank-you or a shoutout to them is enough to boost their morale and performance.
- Make sure that gratitude is a regular cultural norm and is known to every new hire as well.
- Ensure that individuals know how their goals relate to the organization’s objectives, mission, and vision.
- This makes employees feel they are valued and hence, retain top talents automatically.
Through the HuddleUp platform, Appreciate your peers in the daily flow of work and spread positivity.
- Group discussions and retrospectives: Group feedback and discussions have always been an interactive part of workplace culture. Hence, when implementing a feedback culture, ensure that you don’t miss out on it.
- After the completion of any task or project, have group retrospectives sessions.
- Reflect on everyone’s performance and what is being learned by everyone. You can ask these three questions:
- What went well?
- What could be improvised?
- What actions should be taken to move forward?
- Also, let them know how their previous feedback was acted upon at this point and how it helped in the projects.
- This will help employees to be on the same page as their peers. It also let them know their performance and improvements.
- Group retrospectives also assist in resolving issues among employees and managers.
Include feedback software tools: The above-mentioned ways can be daunting sometimes. Especially when you’re already piled up with loads of work. This is when feedback software tools come to your rescue and save you time and energy.
- These specific tools automate the feedback process and make it smooth and easy.
- Use a tool that is employee-friendly and has features like anonymity, insights, etc.
- This will ensure that the feedback is integrated with day-to-day operations. So, that quick actions can be taken.
- It let employees be well acquainted with the feedback culture and tools.
- One such highly-recommended software is HuddleUp. It can streamline your feedback process and make it smooth in the long run.
How HuddleUp is helping companies to implement continuous feedback?
HuddleUp is one such platform that can help automate your feedback process. Through this software, you can send and receive actionable feedback. It includes 1-on-1 meetings, 360-degree feedback, custom surveys, and check-ins. Besides that, the platform ensures anonymity leading to honest feedback.
Feedbacks are an efficient way to grow and develop, but, only when they are acted upon. Hence, HuddleUp also provides insights that let you know your detailed performance.
In a nutshell
Continuous feedback, when implemented right, proves to be the backbone of the business. It is not only quarterly performance reviews and odd employee surveys, but more than that.
While you focus on the profits and success of your organization, make sure that you don’t forget about your work culture too.